flynfrog wrote:The correct answer is the car you can afford slicks for.
Indeed. But you also need to factor in that the car will need to cope with the added forces. In other words, you can't just put on slicks onto any car without putting some thought into what the car can cope with, and more importantly, that the engine doesn't run dry whilst cornering.
On just about
any tracks I've been too, the quickest cars around are most always Caterham Super7s, even the ones with ~185bhp K-Rover engines. And by a mile too. Once you get into the league with R500s, CSRs you are in another world entirely lap-time wise. They even handily beat an Arial Atom (I'm guessing due to the Atoms higher CoG) in cornering. Once you put in a sequential gearbox, you can shave off even more time of your lap. And the best thing? They're relatively cheap and the low weight yields further benefits in that not huge tires are required, not huge brake disks, calipers etc to have sufficient braking force. So more money shaved.
Once you take Porsches or other more expensive track focused cars, it quickly gets more and more expensive with little benefit lap-time wise vs. a Super7.
True, on a track like the Nordschleife, the Super7s lack of top-speed will see it beaten by quite a few cars (in higher price range), but in cornering? Not a chance, unless you're in something like a Zonda-R and other hyper-cars.
For what it's also worth; I've had the pleasure to match my car with a Nissan GT-R on small twisty tracks and even in my car @900kg, it's amazing what that Nissan can do cornering wise. It's essentially a small car just enlarged. It has very wide sticky tires (relatively) speaking and will murder most cars in cornering (sans a Super7 which is just another league).
